If there's anything guaranteed to warm the heart of a veteran rock band, it was the scene outside the Shepherd's Bush Empire, where Pearl Jam were warming up for an arena tour that starts next week. Alongside the touts were a cluster of people, average age 20, holding up homemade signs pleading for spare tickets. "Genuine fan desperately needs a ticket," read one brandished by a girl who couldn't have been born when the group first created their brew of grunge chords and despondency.

It's no great surprise that, years after their commercial peak, Pearl Jam's music still matters. Even with their ninth album, Backspacer, about to appear, they remain relentless foes of "the man", while producing music that envelops listeners in a warm sense of shared despair. Singer Eddie Vedder seems a much chirpier chap these days: tonight, he even cracked jokes about Big Brother. But he still sings with righteous rage. Glowering at the unfairness of everything, he invested nearly all 26 songs of the set – most of them great slabs of riff-based rock – with an adolescent moroseness that explained his appeal to the mainly young audience.

The signature hits Even Flow ("written in 1793", quipped Vedder) and Alive inspired singalongs, while old non-hits such as Why Go and Do the Evolution were greeted with pleasure. Even new ones Got Some and The Fixer – punchier and poppier than the rest – were respectfully received.

The highlights, however, were two cover versions and two guests. All Along the Watchtower featured a stalk-like Ronnie Wood on guitar, and Pete Townshend's guitarist brother, Simon, turned up to play on the Who's The Real Me. For those few minutes, Pearl Jam forgot the angst and yielded to something that looked suspiciously like joy.

Sign up for the Guardian Today

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.